The positive effects of military service on public opinion are strongest among Republicans and conservatives often viewed as opposed to immigration reforms seeking to expand access to citizenship. That support also remains strong when the military service pathway is paired with less-popular options such as requiring would-be citizens to pursue a college education.

The research, from 91探花political science associate professors and , was in March in the journal International Migration Review; their paper is titled “Who Gets to Have a DREAM? Examining Public Support for Immigration Reform.”

“We find that the military pathway is very convincing, even if you pair it with something else,” said Jord谩n Wallace.

“That’s really important, because what it tells us is that there is so much benefit and value assigned to military service, it’s able to essentially carry another pathway that people wouldn’t necessarily be as inclined to support.”

Their findings may have implications for crafting immigration legislation that could attract enough bipartisan support to pass both houses of Congress. Immigration is also among the leading issues in the coming 2020 presidential race.

The (short for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act), taken up by Congress first in 2001 and voted on in 2010, offered a path to citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. before the age of 16, had passed background checks and lived in the country for at least five years. Eligible immigrants were further required to have completed at least two years of college education or military service. In 2010 the legislation passed the House but died in the Senate.

Public opinion polls on the DREAM Act, Jord谩n Wallace said, have tended to ask whether or how strongly respondents support it. “But that doesn’t really tell us what the component or pathway is that people do support.”

The researchers wondered: “What are strategies that can be employed if your goal is to pass immigration reform in the Trump era? Might you have to frame things in a specific way to build a coalition for support?”

To study this, they contracted for survey space with the Harvard-administered Congressional Cooperative Election Study. Of this nationally representative survey of 20,000 overall respondents, their study, with questions tailored to their inquiries, involved 1,000 respondents and was conducted between November 2011 and January 2012.

Respondents in the control group were told only that Congress had recently considered legislation to allow undocumented immigrants to apply for citizenship if they were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, but did not specifically mention the DREAM Act or any additional limiting criteria.

The survey then asked, “Do you support or oppose that such people should be allowed to become citizens?鈥� Respondents answered on a four-point scale ranging from “strongly support” to “strongly oppose” extending citizenship to this immigrant group.

“Because the study centered on attitudes toward immigration reform,” the researchers write, “we considered this the most appropriate control

group since it provided a broader policy to which each of the more restrictive treatment conditions could be compared.”

The control condition was compared to support among three treatment conditions stating additional delimiting criteria, or possible pathways to citizenship. These were “enroll in college,” “join the military” or “join the military or enroll in college,” the latter of which mirrors the configuration of the 2010 DREAM Act.

Across the entire sample group, the researchers write, about 65% of all respondents “either supported or strongly supported” a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.

“Not surprisingly,” they write, “Republicans are much less supportive of immigration reform in general, with just over 50%, overall, supporting a pathway to citizenship compared with almost 80% among Democrats.”

The researchers tasked themselves with learning “whether respondents were more supportive of certain subgroups 鈥� military service only, college only, or military and college combined 鈥� within this undocumented population than others.”

The findings were seen, the researchers said, in the difference between answers from respondents in the control group and those in the three choices.

The results, they said, showed a clear preference for military service as a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth: Those given the military-only option were 11 percentage points more likely to support the immigration reform compared with the control group, 72% versus 61%.

Wallace and Jord谩n Wallace also found that this effect is strongest among “those groups who are traditionally viewed as being most opposed to immigration reforms expanding access to citizenship,” in particular Republicans and conservatives.

• Republicans were 25 percentage points more likely to support a military-only option than the control group (65% versus 40%), and conservatives 23 percent more likely (62% versus 39%).
• When education is combined with military service, support among Republicans and conservatives still saw a 21% increase over the control group for Republican respondents, and a 17% increase among conservatives.

The findings, the researchers write, “(are) consistent with the view that the public is willing to reward those who have volunteered to serve directly in defense of the country. The soldier-civilian imperative used by numerous marginalized veteran groups in the past to claim greater citizenship rights shows several signs of having a welcome audience among the wider citizenry.”

To get immigration legislation passed, Jord谩n Wallace said, “It’s going to be critical to think about: Are there ways that you could convince Republicans in Congress to move forward to support a bill? Because even if every single Democrat in the Senate votes in favor, you still need some Republicans, and the question is, how do you do that? There are going to be more strategic ways to frame legislation that will appeal, I think, to those members. That is something that’s worth thinking about if your goal is actual passage of meaningful immigration reform.”

It’s possible, she noted, that the activists originally promoting the DREAM Act 鈥� often on college campuses 鈥� may have felt it was “too high of a burden” to suggest military service, which historically has disproportionately enrolled and thus endangered people of color as a pathway to citizenship.

But they might have been more successful turning opposition into approval had they “at least combined college with military in a way that would have appealed to Republicans or conservatives.”

Although the survey was conducted several years ago, the researchers argue the findings remain relevant for the present moment as public attitudes toward immigration, as well as the military, have remained relatively stable.

Geoffrey Wallace said, “There has been a tradition not only in the U.S. but in other societies as well 鈥� the citizen-soldier ideal 鈥� that citizenship brings certain benefits but also certain responsibilities, foremost among these is a martial one. And that was one of the reasons for conscription 鈥� not only in terms of national military capabilities, it was also to build citizens.”

Even with conscription long past and an all-volunteer army today in the U.S. and often elsewhere too, he added, “What we find is that, especially among Republicans and the public writ large 鈥� among the existing citizenry 鈥� the notion of the citizen-soldier ideal still resonates.”

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For more information, contact Sophia Jord谩n Wallace at 206-543-5701 or sophiajw@uw.edu, or Geoffrey Wallace at 206-685-5580 or gprwall@uw.edu.

On today’s increasingly crowded globe, human migration can strain infrastructure and resources. Accurate data on migration flows could help governments plan for and respond to immigrants. Yet these figures, when available, tend to be spotty and error-ridden, even in the developed world. Researchers have developed approaches to estimate migration rates, but even the best of these rely on unrealistic assumptions about the mass movement of people and yield migration rates that can fall far below reality.

In a published聽online Dec. 24 in the , two scientists at the 91探花 unveiled a new statistical method for estimating migration flows between countries, using the so-called pseudo-Bayes approach. They show that rates of migration 鈥� defined as an international move followed by a stay of at least one year 鈥� are higher than previously thought, but also relatively stable, fluctuating between 1.1 and 1.3 percent of global population from 1990 to 2015. In addition, since 1990 approximately 45 percent of migrants have returned to their home countries, a much higher estimate than other methods.

These more accurate estimates of migration will ultimately help both migrants and the people who assist them, said senior author , a 91探花professor of statistics and sociology.

“Planning for migration is no simple task,” said Raftery. “You need everything from medical infrastructure and trained personnel to elementary schools 鈥� and governments rely on accurate demographic estimates to help them put the right plans and responses into place.”

Countries collect migration data through immigration forms at ports of entry, but answers on these forms may contain mistakes, and often fail to collect the types of comprehensive information that demographers need to measure migration accurately. Census forms also tend to ask people where they were born, but usually not when they moved, information which does not accurately reflect the true level of movement.

“Migration is much more than the place you left and the place you ultimately settled in,” said Raftery. “Researchers have tried for years to develop statistical methods that capture the comprehensive picture of human migration across the globe.”

Raftery developed these new migration rate estimates along with his former doctoral student Jonathan Azose, a 91探花affiliate assistant professor of statistics and the paper’s lead author. They applied the pseudo-Bayes method to migration estimates by incorporating elements of other methods, and calibrated their estimates against a relatively reliable model of migration among 31 European countries.

Azose and Raftery tested the accuracy of pseudo-Bayes against a set of reliable migration figures and discovered that its estimates were typically accurate to within a factor of three, better than many existing estimates.

“For the migration field, this level of accuracy is a significant improvement,” said Azose. “Even when you look at data from European countries, it’s not uncommon for a single migration flow to have estimates that differ by a factor of three or more depending on whether the sending or the receiving country collected the data.”

They also discovered that, compared to other approaches, pseudo-Bayes can more accurately account for return migration, in which migrants go back to their home countries.

“Our estimate shows a higher global flow of migrants in large part because it indicates that return migration is much higher than previously thought,” said Azose.

The researchers estimate significantly higher migration rates than prior methods 鈥� between 67 million and 87 million migrants over each five-year period from 1990 to 2015. By comparison, one widely used alternative method, which only estimates the minimum rate of migration, calculates just 34 to 46 million migrants in each five-year period. In addition, while the total number of migrants estimated by pseudo-Bayes increased from 1990 to 2015, the migration rate over that period remained relatively stable as a proportion of global population 鈥� between 1.1 and 1.3 percent.

Azose and Raftery also broke down migration rates by emigration, return migration and transit migration, in which migrants move between two countries that are not their countries of birth. In general, from 1990 to 2015, more than 60 percent of migration was emigration. Transit migration never topped 9 percent. Return migration accounted for 26 to 31 percent of migrants, more than twice the rate of other migration estimates. That high rate of return migration added up over time. From 1990 to 2015, approximately 45 percent of migrants ultimately returned to their home countries.

Largest emigration, return migration and transit migration flows in 2010-2015

Credit: Azose and Raftery, PNAS, 2018.

“We estimate a rate of return migration that is significantly higher than other methods, but it is also supported by history,” said Raftery. “For example, during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, more than a million migrants left the country, but most returned within three years after the conflict ended.”

The top migration rates that they observed more recently between countries were consistent with ongoing world events. Migration out of Syria, for example, accounted for two of the top three emigration flows from 2010 to 2015.

The researchers would like to refine their method by differentiating between refugees, which are counted by their method, and other types of migrants. In addition, they would like to incorporate data from non-governmental sources, such as social media records, to improve the accuracy of their estimates, as well as develop approaches to forecast future migration.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

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For more information, contact Raftery at raftery@uw.edu and Azose at jazose@gmail.com.

Grant numbers: R01 HD54511, R01 HD70936.

But a new study of the worldwide migration of professionals to the U.S. shows a sharp drop-off in its proportional share of those workers 鈥� raising the question of whether the nation will remain competitive in attracting top talent in an increasingly globalized economy.

The , which used a novel method of tracking people through data from the social media site LinkedIn, is believed to be the first to monitor global migrations of professionals to the U.S., said co-author , a 91探花 assistant professor of sociology and fellow of the 91探花.

鈥淭his is the first time a worldwide data set has been used to answer this question,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat hasn鈥檛 been done before.鈥�

The study, which was presented at the recent conference in Barcelona, Spain, found that:

• While 27 percent of migrating professionals among the sample group chose the U.S. as a destination in 2000, in 2012 just 13 percent did.
• The decline was seen across professionals with bachelor鈥檚, master鈥檚 and doctoral degrees.
• The biggest drop was among those in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, from 37 to 15 percent.
• Asian countries saw the highest increase in professional migrants worldwide, attracting a cumulative 26 percent in 2012, compared with just 10 percent in 2000.
• Australia, Oceania, Africa and Latin America also saw an uptick in their share of the world鈥檚 professional migration flows.
• The U.S. attracted 24 percent of graduates from the top 500 universities worldwide in 2000, but just 12 percent in 2012.

鈥淭hese other countries are attracting not only a higher share of migrants, but also migrants from the top universities in the world,鈥� Zagheni said. 鈥淭hat was surprising.鈥�

The study, which comes at a time when the nation is mired in a divisive fight over immigration reform, counters conventional wisdom that the U.S. is the incontestable top choice for professionals migrating from other countries.

鈥淭he U.S. is still the top destination for migrations, but [the study] shows that this is something that should not be taken for granted,鈥� said co-author Bogdan State, who worked on the study as a Stanford University graduate student alongside co-author Mario Rodriguez, a LinkedIn senior data scientist.

The study suggests numerous possible reasons for the proportional migration decline 鈥� the U.S.鈥檚 complex visa system, greater demand for professionals in other countries, fewer opportunities for immigrants due to the dot-com collapse of the early 2000s and the 2008 recession.

, a 91探花sociology professor and expert on immigration to the U.S., said the findings underscore the emergence of other nations in sectors once dominated by the United States.

鈥淭he United States has to work really hard to stay competitive in this environment,鈥� Hirschman said. 鈥淓ven if we鈥檙e doing everything right, we鈥檙e still going to face increasing competition.鈥�

Tracking international migration patterns is key to making fiscal projections and shaping effective policies. But migration data tend to be inconsistent across countries and expensive to gather. And there鈥檚 no consensus between nations on what constitutes a migrant.

Zagheni and other researchers realized a few years ago that the borderless and ubiquitous nature of social media made it a virtual goldmine of migration data. In 2012, Zagheni and Ingmar Weber, then a research scientist at Yahoo, the Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses of 43 million Yahoo mail users to calculate migration rates to and from countries worldwide, producing the first-ever curve of U.S. emigration by age and gender.

Earlier this year, Zagheni, State and researchers from the Qatar Computing Research Institute published a that estimated migration patterns among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries by analyzing 500,000 Twitter users. They found that migration rates from Mexico to the U.S. had dropped, while migration increased from European countries hit hard by the economic crisis, such as Greece and Ireland.

Zagheni acknowledges that the LinkedIn research has limitations. For example, since the study did not include citizenship information, researchers couldn鈥檛 distinguish between U.S. expatriates returning to the country and in-migration of foreign workers.

More significantly, LinkedIn users aren’t a representative sample of the entire population of highly skilled migrants in the U.S. The researchers addressed that by dividing the data set into 10 groups, one for each new cluster of users annually since 2004, and confirmed that there was a significant downward trend in U.S. migration among all 10 groups.

Respecting the privacy of LinkedIn鈥檚 members was a primary concern. LinkedIn researchers used algorithms to generate the dataset used in the study, which did not include any personal information, according to a LinkedIn representative. The company declined to specify how many LinkedIn users were involved in the study.

Zagheni thinks social media data can be valuable to demographers, geographers and economists to help understand long-term migration patterns and develop improved theories. Hirschman lauded the researchers鈥� work as 鈥渁 major step forward鈥� in effectively using data from social media.

鈥淭his is a very, very creative approach, and I think it鈥檚 opening up a whole new world of data analysis that鈥檚 going to enrich the field of demography and international migration studies,鈥� he said.

The other co-author is Dirk Helbing, a professor of sociology at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.